Hunger of All Kinds
by 13pens
Summary: And honestly, they're both so ridiculously sick of feeling. They're so, so utterly sick of talking about people who make them miserable. Tink/Z, OSQ, sisterly shenanigans. Part 3 of the "More Than the Shadows (of Each Other)" series, following after "A Place Where There's Room to Grow", and, unlike that one, cannot be read as a standalone.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N**: and it's here! part 3 of the series, following directly after "a place where there's room to grow" (which followed after "those like us"). many thanks to amy, onella, amanda, and addie. they give me and this series life.

_(Previously: Regina takes Zelena in, everyone but she and Henry like her, Zelena is afraid, Emma acts out and books it, Grumpy is an asshat, Tink is an angel. And that's what you missed on: Z!)_

* * *

She'll actually kill her.

Regina hasn't even gotten all of the sleep out of her eyes yet when she finds Zelena's room empty, her car gone, and two text messages from the sheriff's department talking about some bullshit about public nuisance. She's going through ten different scenarios and six out of ten involve Zelena sitting like a delinquent at the station waiting for Regina to pick her up, two involve someone's blackened eye, and all of them have Emma somewhere in the equation. Regina doesn't ever get a break. Never.

She sits at the foot of the stairs, her cell on her lap, massaging the temples of her aching forehead because all she can do is wait. When she finally hears the sound of keys being jabbed into the knob of the door, she quickly gathers up every possible scolding she could give to Zelena.

Except that she walks in like a freaking somnambulist, not even meeting her eye, like she's lost somewhere. There are stains on her clothes, there is quite possibly loose dirt at the back of her head, and there are just so many questions. So many.

"What in the world, Zelena?" is all she can manage, looking up at her.

"I brought coffee." She gingerly places it in Regina's hands, and walks off down the hall and into the kitchen with her own cup.

Regina sighs, takes a sip––and _damn_, it's right what she needed now, but Zelena is so far from off the hook––and rises to follow her insane sister. Her sister that doesn't even say _sorry_ or grant her an explanation as to why she snuck out early in the morning with her car. She'll actually kill her.

But upon entering the kitchen she finds Zelena leaning with her elbows onto the counter, hands covering her face. She's not touching her coffee. She suddenly looks so small, and Regina doesn't know what to say.

She goes for a gentle, "Hey?"

Zelena lifts her head up with a deep inhale and she's not so small anymore, though a little worn; truthfully, Regina's just relieved that she isn't crying again, but who knows how long that emotional détente will last.

"Hey. Yeah. Sorry."

Regina leans on the doorframe and lets the cup warm her hands. She feels like she needs distance for this one. "Care to tell me what you're sorry for?"

There's a hesitation, a brief stillness of Zelena looking at nothing with her arms crossed atop the counter but her lips begin to part and words begin leave them. "I went to Emma against my better judgment."

She was right, she needs distance, because she actually might kill her.

"I don't know why, I just," Zelena shrugs ever so slightly, but it's full of this hopeless weight, "it made sense at the time. I was thinking of you and Henry." Regina softens, but then––"And then she said things and then things didn't make sense. And then at the diner––"

She tries to stifle her exasperated sigh, she really does. It's too early in the morning. "You went to the diner, too. Emma wasn't enough. It's like you _want_ to be––" She almost drops the cup onto the floor because she's caught herself being so _careless_.

Zelena huffs. "You can say it, you know," she says, her voice a low rumble of a rasp, "It's like I want to be treated like _trash_."

"No," Regina shakes her head, "that's not what I was going to say."

She's shrugged off, dismissed, like it doesn't really matter how you wrap it, it's the same stuff in the box. "You told me yourself, the first night I spent here. Our reputations follow us around like flies. Emma verified that to me. And then I suppose I needed to see it for myself."

Zelena's starting to shrink again as her face scrunches up, her nose begins to turn that shade of red. Regina's vision is starting to blur with each blink.

And then she minds the stains on Zelena's hoodie and she thinks of Grumpy knocking down her first set of coffee or her stumbling into a pole and getting it on herself.

"What happened there," she asks, barely above a whisper. She's resting on the fork in the road that could easily turn into either pity or anger.

There's a subtle change in Zelena, though, something she'd miss the transition of completely if she had blinked, and maybe she hears a small laugh in place of a sob. "Your clumsy friend Tinker Bell."

And honestly, they're both so ridiculously sick of feeling. They're so, so utterly _sick_ of talking about people who make them miserable, so really, the only logical thing to do right now is laugh at Tink's blessed, blessed expense. They laugh so hard and it's full of _and she was like, oh gods! _and _that is exactly her face_.

Henry actually comes down half awake and says that if they're not splitting their sides while splitting eggs then he's not interested in being woken up like this.

* * *

Soon, as if everything before had never actually happened, Regina and Henry take it upon themselves to guide Zelena through her first attempt at the creation of food.

("Magic-less cooking without still starving. What a feat of this life!" Zelena would sob but it's with true excitement; Regina's never seen anyone hold a spatula with such teary zeal.)

And somehow and someway, flour ends up all over the counter, some of it sprinkled over their heads; an egg almost meets its demise on the tile floor and Regina would be furious about it, but everything before _did_ happen, and they need laughter, they need smiles.

Henry doesn't think Regina can hear him when he cups a hand next to Zelena's ear and says, "You ever heard of the cinnamon challenge?"

Regina is tempted to let it happen. "You let her do that and you'll be cleaning it up, _mijo_."

"Aw, mom, I was just kidding." She gives him the _sure you were_ face and he mirrors it with an added sarcasm and he's hers, he's really hers.

"How about some music?" Zelena suggests, shaking the loose flour from her hair and tying it back up again. "Maybe that ABBA stuff you're so insistent I should get around to."

Regina pops it into their old portable stereo and in a moment they're making pancakes while singing and dancing to _Super Trouper_, and none of them really know the words besides the actual lyrics from the title, but it's good enough. They're happy enough.

At one point Zelena lifts the spatula with misguided force and a pancake goes midair, too far over her head for her to recover. But Henry, like he is made of magic, catches it with a plate, and it's all open mouths and cheers and clapping.

Briefly, when productive cooking is actually happening, Regina wonders if it had been Zelena. If she had been chosen, if she had lived the life that she had sought so desperately. By the stretch of her smile, how the lines around her eyes are so _deep_ as she looks at Henry, she doesn't doubt that she'd have found him and loved him the way Regina did. The way Regina does.

There are still so many pieces to be picked up but she's never felt so _whole_.

* * *

The mirth trickles down and plateaus to a zone of_ "_holding up alright" over the next few days. No one really talks about Emma, at least not by name, because they know there is nothing to be done, and Zelena had relayed her message that this wasn't permanent anyway.

But then Henry confronts her one night. She thinks about _if you love him at all you will tell him_, but he's not there to place that on the table, he's not angry. He's grown so much, and she can hear it in his voice as he reflects his aging heart: "It's okay. I understand. I just wanted to let you know that because I haven't always before."

* * *

They later decide that Emma's absence does not mean that the gap between the Charming and Mills households should continue. It's a conclusion that perhaps Snow has not only come to as well but necessitates: Regina receives a phone call inviting her and Henry for lunch, with an _I also may need help with the baby and you were so good with Henry please come over_ attached hastily at the end.

Regina asks if she could bring Zelena, and she doesn't think very hard on the reluctant "yes" that she receives.

Neal is not a quiet baby; the three of them are barely out the car and they can hear him wailing through an open window, and the sound rings familiar to both Regina and Zelena except that one recalls Henry and another is an echo of just the week before.

"You were the same," Regina says to Henry as they climb the steps. They share a smile but Zelena rolls her eyes.

"They all are, aren't they?"

The baby screaming intensifies when they get to the door, and Snow is the portrait of relief when she sees Regina.

"Oh thank the gods. Come in, come in."

(If she or Henry sees the momentary glint in Snow's eyes upon seeing Zelena behind them, they don't say a word.)

David has the baby in his arms and is bouncing and swaying in futile attempts to soothe Neal. Out of the two parents, it's David who looks like complete shit. It would be no surprise to anyone if he had volunteered to take care of Neal so Snow could get sleep.

"I don't understand. We've done everything right. The animals used to love me. Why doesn't my own son?"

"Because your son isn't a goat, genius," Regina quips in response to his dramatics. She raises her arms toward him and David gladly settles Neal into them.

She loves Henry no matter how old or big he's gotten, but it doesn't mean that Regina is incapable of holding baby Neal and experiencing heavy doses of nostalgia, that the weight of a tiny being makes her arms feel less empty.

Then the cacophony decrescendos and at the sound of Regina's gentle cooing, he's silent. David and Snow, despite being the ones who had asked for her help in the first place, look _offended_.

Zelena actually snorts from where she's sitting next to Henry on the couch; Regina doesn't blame her, because it is all laughable indeed, but there's a little more weight in the glare she receives. It instantly sobers her, needless to say.

"Thank you, Regina," Snow starts, and she lifts her hands under Neal, "I've got him now."

Neal feels himself being passed on and starts fussing again; Snow places him back with Regina and he's back to relaxed gurgles.

"If you remember anything about when Henry was Neal's size," Regina laughs, "I suppose we're even now."

But Snow, no matter how grateful she is, has so much pride. She blurts, "Everything was fine with Neal until Emma left."

Regina faces Zelena and she looks like she's stopped breathing, and Henry's looking at everyone with an uneasy confusion and given different circumstances, she'd eviscerate Snow for ever pulling this shit in front of him.

It's David, though, whom she realizes she is grateful for more and more. "We should get you all drinks. Zelena, I hear you're fond of pineapple juice…"

It becomes an easy distraction, a seemingly bland conversation, and Regina gently guides Snow to the kitchen end of the apartment.

"Snow…"

"I welcome her into this family," Snow whispers angrily, opening the fridge to close them off from Zelena's view, "and then she tears it apart. I don't want to hear it. I should've told you to leave her at home."

Snow pretends to look around inside for something and Regina feels like she's being hammered underneath her brain with an ice pick, and Neal begins to whimper.

"First of all," Regina starts, careful for any edges in her voice that could cut the baby in her arms, "You have literally done nothing more to welcome my sister into the family than dine in her presence. Secondly, do you honestly believe that she is solely responsible for Emma?"

Snow pauses, visibly clenching her jaws.

"You forget that not even my attempts to have her gone were enough to drive her away. Don't underestimate her like that."

Then she sees the anger dissipate into something softer and, well, pitiful.

"It's my fault, isn't it."

"Snow."

"Emma needs to be put first, she's never had that before, and then we had Neal, and she––"

"Needs to grow out of the idea that first means _only_." Among other things, Regina might add, but she's so tired.

Neal makes an urgent gurgle as if to agree (another thing that won't come to Regina's surprise is if down the line, this child grows up to be an intuitive mind reader), and Snow's no longer clenching her jaw, hand no longer gripping at the fridge handle.

"Meanwhile, so do you two idiots, if you never thought to have this conversation with Emma in the first place."

Snow closes off the discussion on the subject of food, but Regina knows she understands. She has to, when she can finally pick Neal up without him crying, and when she actually asks Zelena if she'd like to hold him herself.

* * *

But if Regina has to talk about Emma one more time, she may burst. She doesn't realize how much of Emma is seeping into every aspect of her life and how much she doesn't want it until it happens with Robin.

One comfort of having him was that he was distant from everything. He was distant from her history, and even though he's accepted everything in his stride, there is a constant anxiety over having this part of her story mingle with the part that has Emma in it. And then he goes and asks her if she's all right, if she's still upset about her.

Of course she is. But she's making do. She's trying not to build her houses on sand.

And if he didn't have Roland sat on his shoulders and if they weren't being so adorably precious, she'd push him.

"I'm sorry," he starts, "we won't talk about her, then."

"Too late," Regina shrugs sardonically, "you brought her up, and now we're going to talk about her."

Robin sighs, sets Roland down. "See that swing over there, son? Don't that look fun? Go on, we'll watch you."

He half waddles half runs to the tire swing, and Robin leads her to the bench across.

(Bless his gentle, patient soul; Regina still wants to disappear at the mention of Emma's name. She's so tired. Emma isn't even here but she is everywhere.)

It takes her a while before she actually starts talking to him, because it's hard, but she needs to, even though running would be particularly easier.

"Before us," she begins tentatively, watching Roland as he grips the rope and swings to and fro like a grandfather clock, "it really could have been… we understood each other, when it came to Henry –– and we _could_ have_… _I was –– _we_ were ––"

She's never said it aloud. Something feels so wrong about the fact that she's beginning to in front of Robin of all people, but he only looks at her like she hangs the stars, as always, and she breathes a little easier.

He takes her hand, says it for her. "You loved each other. _Love_, even."

Then she's afraid, she's worried, because Emma _can't_ break this, not when she's not even in their vicinity. "Robin––"

"I'm not hurt. There is nothing wrong." She searches his face and it's all there, it's all _genuine_, and this is the last thing she'd have expected.

If she hangs the stars, then he paints the black sky for them to shine in.

And she can only laugh. What rare, beautiful luck she has sometimes. "Are you sure you're a real person?"

* * *

Good presence and drink is something they all need at this point. The Rabbit Hole isn't a place where Regina often frequents, especially not with a sister to accompany her, but it's a treat, and there isn't a reason why not. Regina's dropped Henry off at his grandparents' with his overnight pack, and now all that is on her list of worries is what kind of drunk Zelena turns out to be.

They're in the driveway with their arms crossed against the cold waiting for Tinkerbell; Regina prefers not to drive with any amount of alcohol in her body, and she could just not have any but everyone knows that's not happening, especially after this past month and a half.

"So," Zelena starts, her breath misting the icy air, "What made things right between you and, uh, fairy girl?"

There's a restrained interest in her voice, one that Regina can't quite identify yet, and it amuses her. "You could at least pretend that you didn't watch me for years on end. We made amends. Like how all fixed relationships go."

Regina observes Zelena from the side; her eyes are darting everywhere and she's tapping her feet ever so slightly. She's nervous, and there could be a thousand reasons why that is, but then she remembers how she flipped a switch that one morning, and how she did it again when she mentioned Tink tonight.

_Oh_.

Ah.

"I can see why you two are friends," Zelena says, "she's very nice."

It's so hard not to smile. "She often gets her foot in her mouth, but yes, she really is."

Momentary silence is filled in with the tap of Zelena's heels on the cement.

"Do you talk to her often about me?"

"No."

"Oh." Then she blunders, "Good, cause that makes me uncomfortable anyway."

"I'm sure it does."

Zelena catches her smiling and is instantly irritated. "_What _is that look for?"

A laugh bubbles out of Regina's mouth, and her grin is all teeth. "You're as subtle as a rock on glass. Why don't you just tell me?"

Zelena frowns, and it shouldn't be healthy how red her face is turning, but then again, that face is familiar with unnatural pigments.

Then she thinks briefly of how destructive this may be, how Tinkerbell is all about the predetermination and destiny that Zelena has been running from––but that's a discussion for when there's more than just prospect.

"Do you want me to tell her to forget it?" Regina asks, and the concern for her comfort is genuine. "We'll walk and get a taxi later. Or we can do something else. Whatever you like. There's a karaoke bar just down the street from The Rabbit Hole, I'm sure they have the entire ABBA discography."

"No, I––ugh, _Regina_." It's a whine so characteristic of all the teenagers in the DCOMs Henry used to watch that it makes Regina want to laugh again, but of course there's something more. Zelena's afraid, and has all these reasons to be.

Regina puts an arm across her back and pulls her close to her. "Let's just have a good time tonight."

Then Tink rolls up in a bright green mini cooper and Zelena actually breathes, "I am not getting into that car." But Tink rolls down the window, gives that enchanting beam and says hello, so of course she gets in the stupid car.


	2. Chapter 2

** A/N**: many many thanks to my regular group of ficverse feeders, with the addition of the amazing strangesmallbard.

* * *

The blackness of sleep meets midday sunlight as Zelena awakens. The taste and smell of alcohol still lingers from the night before (and briefly, she's given an alarming reminder of her father, but she waves it away; he's not been a presence for years). Her pajamas are wrinkled and mis-buttoned.

She opens her eyes to Regina's toes and smacks them away, and she in turn murmurs in her sleep as she drools on the end of the bed.

Zelena rubs her eyes and pushes at Regina's shoulder with the heel of her foot. "Hey. Dancing queen."

Regina stirs, pulls the pillow from under her and brings it over her head. "Five more minutes."

"Don't you have a job to attend to? It's nearing noon."

She groans and slowly sits up only to plop back down next to Zelena. Her hair is mussed and the makeup not completely wiped clean, and Zelena only expects to look the same, probably worse.

"Yeah, well. Loose government has always been my way of things." Regina yawns and stretches, purposefully pushing Zelena with her outstretched feet and hands before she's lightly smacked away. "Did you have fun last night?"

"Yeah," Zelena replies, and it's almost curiously, like she didn't expect to have it, like she was not in a position to ever have it from the confines of this house. "It was nice. Yeah."

"I'm glad," Regina says genuinely. "I'm also glad that we managed to avoid a bar fight."

"Yeah, well. Tinkerbell took care of 'im for us, didn't she? Dust straight up the gut." She makes an exaggerated upward motion with her first. "People thought he was just being clumsy."

"Plays hard, that one."

"Makes me miss the days where fun came from the pain and humiliation of others," Zelena jokes, and it makes Regina give the appreciative laugh of someone who only knows the feeling.

And then––"So. Tinkerbell."

Zelena half groans half growls and brings up her covers over her head. Regina chuckles at her like she's overreacting.

"She is amiable and charming and you like that," Regina says, "It's _fine_."

"No, it's not," Zelena whines. "It's pathetic. Developing some sort of juvenile attachment to the first person who doesn't look at me like I'm made of _… mud_."

There's a pause, and Zelena can't see her face but she doesn't have the pressing need to look anyway. She's expecting Regina to dig further, carry on with this newfound routine of emotional crises, because she must know that without even mentioning him, she is talking about what she's learned from Rumple. What she's learned from the toxic desire to win him over. She must know. She's afraid that this conversation's taken a turn for the worse and that everything's going to get heavy again, but Regina keeps it up on their comfortable plane of banter.

"You maybe did have some mud at the back of your hair that day. Emma _did_ push you down pretty hard." Her voice is saturated in jest, the wonderful little shit, and Zelena uncovers her head to smack Regina's arm, but not without a grin of her own.

"It's not pathetic," Regina sobers. "And it's not the same. It becomes the same when it becomes destructive."

Zelena maintains the silence only of someone who has been told what she realizes is true.

"Just be cautious," Regina adds. "Without that you two are a bomb waiting to happen."

Zelena scoffs, but the unease is ever present in her. "Caution. Such a foreign concept."

Then there's a low half gurgle half rumble emitting from their stomachs, and it brings attention to how absurd it is that they're bunched up together like teenagers at a slumber party. Like sisters.

Regina huffs something like amusement, rolls up and out of bed, pads towards the door. "I'll tell you what should never be a foreign concept: breakfast for lunch."

* * *

"Loose governing" or spending time elsewhere, Regina begins leaving Zelena home alone more often. She's enrolled Henry at Storybrooke High, which Zelena understands is much needed, but it's left her with too much time on her own.

She sits under the apple tree in the backyard, and though she takes comfort in stillness, her head swarms with unsettling thoughts and questions of where she is and where she belongs, and how long it will take her to get there. To equate safety with home instead of power, to see Robin and Regina and _not _think of Tinkerbell, who at this point may just be an abstract idea of _somebody_, and _not_ feel a sort of rotting beginning in her stomach again –– to simply be who she is. But who is she? At her real core, who is she but someone who, in Regina's words, merely wants to be wanted?

Zelena sighs. She's been alive for so long. And she's spent it being _stupid_.

Her life is also supposedly one sick joke: everything in the universe compounds to create a moment of coincidence and twisted humor when the immediate cause of her existential crises literally flies right in.

"Zelena," Tink greets as her feet touch the grass, and she's genuinely pleased to see her, just like the time after she spilled coffee all over hoodie. "I was passing by. I hope you don't mind my company."

She should send her back on her merry way. But she's stupid. Stupid stupid. "No, no," Zelena says enthusiastically, even pats the space of grass next to her. She can't believe herself. But she's so _lonely_. "I was just enjoying the weather. Rather warmer than it is in the Forest, isn't it?"

Tink isn't even aware of how stupid Zelena sounds, either that or she's not showing it. She sits with her legs crossed on the grass with her back straight, wings fluttering slightly behind her. (The sight makes her miss the feeling of being in the air. This is a bad idea.)

"It is, love it actually," she replies, and usually when people look this happy about something like weather they're either hiding malicious intent or masking the shallow. But not with Tink, for whatever reason that Zelena can sense. "How are you feeling?"

When Zelena hesitates, because it's such a vague and broad question that she doesn't know how to answer, Tink immediately amends.

"Oh, I mean, about everything. Surely it must all be an adjustment. I imagine not every night is a trip to the Rabbit Hole."

"I'm making do," Zelena replies sheepishly, and it's not entirely a lie.

"I lost my magic once, too, you know," Tink says, and maybe Zelena's face is a little stunned. "I'm sorry, I wasn't really thinking, is that a sensitive topic? I just thought you might need someone to empathize––"

Cute and with a tendency to get her foot in her mouth.

"It's fine," Zelena says. "I don't really notice it's gone anymore."

"I bet you don't," Tink replies dubiously, and maybe it elicits a small, small grin from Zelena.

"I notice only when I feel threatened."

"Do you feel threatened now?" Tink teases, and _gods_.

"Of course not."

The jest softens into kindness. "Good. I want you to feel safe around me."

Zelena remembers Tink giving the magical equivalent to a sucker punch to that man in the bar days ago and oddly yes, yes she does feel safe. She'd like to.

"Listen," Tink begins, rising to leave, "I've got errands to run, but if you're bored and doing nothing at any time, don't be afraid to let me know?"

"Yeah, sure."

Tink waves goodbye and beams and as soon as she flies away Zelena closes her eyes and hits the back of her head on the trunk of the tree.

* * *

Yet, something possesses her to come to the backyard as part of her routine when Regina and Henry are out. She's thought it over, and if occupying her time with someone else makes it so that the voices in her head are silenced, then she'll take it. She'll read _Wicked_ under the tree and occasionally look up at the sky to see if a certain fairy "passes by" again.

And she does, and begins to do so more and more frequently. Sometimes she'll stay long enough for Regina to come home and give them the shittiest, most smug grin. Sometimes Henry will join them after he's done with homework and at some point he hauls a giant duffle bag over and tells them how he's always wanted to put up a tent. In a short time the four of them are playing Scrabble in said tent at 9 P.M.

Someday Zelena will be able to feel this security outside of these grounds. She hopes that she and Regina will be loved as much as they feel they are here.

"You look happier," Regina tells her one night, and she's genuinely pleased. Her face is soft and bright.

"I am happier," Zelena replies, not without taking Regina's hand to remind her that she has been the key, she is the key. "I really think so."

* * *

Tink is discussing the properties of pixie and fairy dust while demonstrating on an apple, making it dance midair; goes on and on about the limited production in the Enchanted Forest and how thanks to a combination of this world's science and magic, Storybrooke can easily produce different kinds of dust. Zelena talks to her about what she'd read about them, their magical makeup, their origins. It is something Tink appreciates with an ear-to-ear flooding smile. ("You're like Regina. A 'big nerd', as they call it here.")

"It is said that the pixie dust also carries a kind of sentience. It's a kind that fairy dust doesn't have," Tink says, flicking stray specks downward to fallen leaves, making them levitate. "It's how it is used to find a person's soul mate. It connects to its user, analyzes their soul, if you will –– and leads them straight to the person who shares their, er, '_soul stuff_', for lack of a better word."

"Yes, but sentience warrants subjectivity," Zelena replies with skepticism, but all in good nature, "so really the soul mate stuff is just interpretation, isn't it?"

"Pixie dust never lies," Tink states like it has been the only constant truth in her life.

"Sure. But you can't lie about what you interpret."

"Just as well. It just _knows_." Then Tink lifts up her vial of dust, waves it around enticingly. "Don't you want to try?"

Blood rushes up to Zelena's cheeks so fast that she couldn't possibly pass it off as merely due to sun.

"I don't think I'd agree with it's verdict." Having her destiny laid out in front of her was what got her into trouble in the first place, after all.

"Well," Tink begins to amend, misreading her nerves for shyness, "then think of it as a suggestion. If it's subjective as you say, it's not set in stone. And look how well it worked out for your sister!"

Zelena gives her a dubious look, but then Tink takes her hand and then that's it, her resolve is crumbled. "Fine, fine. Make it quick."

Perhaps this is what Regina meant when she told her to be cautious. Tink was all persuasion via glimmering eyes and ridiculous smiles. The two of them are a bomb waiting to happen.

"Okay, just keep still." Tink takes a pinch of the green dust and scatters it over Zelena (and maybe it makes her think of her, Henry, and Regina in the kitchen getting flour in each other's faces, though this is far, far more than a light hearted family moment).

The dust encircles her and the more it lingers the more invasive it feels.

"Perhaps I don't have enough 'soul stuff' for it to look through," Zelena jokes nervously.

"Just wait."

And then sure enough, a green light is cast above their heads and into the sky. It's almost a beautiful sight, and Zelena almost forgets what it's meant to do –– until the light bends back downward at Tink.

Suddenly, everything is very, very warm.

"That's odd," Tink says, bemused, moving her head out of the spotlight and squinting at the narrow archway the dust had created over them. "It's never done that before. There must be something wrong."

Zelena's eyes have not left Tink at all when she tries another pinch of dust. The archway simply intensifies in color, which only earns more of Tink's confusion. Zelena can't bear it anymore.

"Maybe it's not under the right conditions––"

"_Tinkerbell_," Zelena interrupts with barely restrained desperation. "It's pointing at _you_."

The blankness on Tink's bright face turns into a second of genuine surprise, the surprise that still has her smiling, and it lifts Zelena up and up and up –– and then she watches the very light leave her. Her eyes are hard. Not even a ghost of a smile graces her face. Her wings become limp, and the weight in Zelena's stomach _falls_.

She's full of coal, and there are no fires.

Regina's car comes into the driveway just after and Tink takes it as a cue to leave.

"I've got to be somewhere. I'll see you around."

Pixie dust may never lie, but certain fairies definitely do. "Yeah. See you."

* * *

The next day, because she's either a bleeding optimist or some kind of masochist or both, she's sitting under the tree again.

She isn't expecting it when someone sets foot in her field of vision. Her head springs up to look because maybe, hopefully it is Tinkerbell, but it's not.

It's Rumpelstiltskin, and her blood goes _cold_.

"What are you doing here?" She tries to keep her voice steady, but she's not who she was. She can no longer pretend that she's unafraid.

"Just thought I'd pay you a little friendly visit," he says, almost in hisses. Everything in her body is telling her to get up and run but she is like prey and there is no use in moving.

"Why do I get the feeling that this encounter will be anything but friendly?"

Rumple smirks. "You offend me, Zelena, truly." He knocks down an apple with his cane and catches it. He takes a crunchy, wet bite, and it's almost like a sick demonstration. He's looking down at her and she doesn't meet his eyes. "Regina's taken quite a liking to you, hasn't she?"

"Perhaps she has. Tell me, Rumple, what business do you have here?"

He takes another fruitful bite from the apple and it sounds like the crushing of little bones. It's downright sickening how much his casual demeanor jars with his words. "The kind that is unfinished, you see. Surely you must know, a namesake isn't enough to honor my son."

His unmerciful determination used to be what kept her blood pumping. Now it just makes her feel ill. She closes her eyes. _Finish her_.

Then she hears him laugh. "I'm not going to kill you, if that's what you're afraid of." He adds, slowly, with a slithery kind of quality: "I will admit that seeing your face as you fear for your life could be satisfaction enough."

"Get out of here, Rumpelstiltskin."

"Send me away all you like, dearie. You'll see soon enough that you're not really safe, regardless of whether or not I'm here to ensure that."

Zelena's jaw tightens. "I don't quite follow."

"Your downfall will be your precious sister," he says with appalling glee. "Taking care of you is nothing to her but a practice in power. You're perpetually leashed, my dear."

Zelena shakes her head, wincing, because it's _wrong_. "You don't know anything about Regina."

"In fact I do," he replies, tossing the apple on the ground by her feet. He walks away and she swears clumps of green turn to rust in his wake. "I practically created her myself."

* * *

She tells Regina only that he was here. She doesn't tell her what he'd said, but she gathers that the shaking of her voice gives away that it was anything but a harmless, amicable visitation.

Regina casts a protection spell, and she doesn't intend for it to be the end all and be all of this apparent Rumpelstiltskin situation, but it is a precaution that they would both be foolish not to take. The spell is enacted with light magic; it feels different than her own, if she can still remember how that truly felt –– but it feels warmer, smoother, like new blankets after Regina does the laundry, or hot cocoa in the morning, or the first time Regina touched Zelena's hand in the hospital.

Zelena tries not to think about how this was the same magic that brought her to the brink of death. And if she does, she thinks over and over again of how Regina cried over her and said: _No more. That's enough. No more._

* * *

She sees Tinkerbell less often and it's easy to accept. Heartbreak is nothing foreign to Zelena. It is now just a matter of moving on. It's not the same and it becomes the same when it becomes destructive, and Zelena won't let that happen. Even if her existence as of late is a cycle of misery and fear.

Emma, after three months since her departure, has chosen to return. All of them––she, Regina, Henry, two idiots and the rapidly growing baby––are in the living room of the apartment awaiting her arrival.

When someone finally knocks, when Snow White opens the door and when it is Emma under the frame, there is a collective breath that is released by everyone but Zelena. She walks in and she looks just a little bit older, but she's brighter. Like she's learned something so, so profound while away and she's determined to show them.

Emma gives Zelena a regarding nod, interrupted by the intensity of Henry's hug. It elicits a laugh and Regina is beaming. There are tears in her eyes.

When she stops in front of Regina, they just look at each other for a while. Regina hugs Emma, then, and both of them are sniffling, and it feels so intimate that Zelena has to face the other direction.

She is glad for her sister. She is glad that she's making more amends with the people she clearly wants to keep. But Zelena is still full of coal and no fire, so maybe she feels something else, something that's been so dormant all this while. It makes her sick.


	3. Chapter 3

The family reunion is quiet, but it's like a nice long sigh that ends in breathing new again. Henry has fallen asleep with his heavy, growing head on Emma's lap as she talks softly to Regina and Snow, while Zelena sits at the table with her tea. David comes down the stairs, the lulled Neal now asleep in his crib.

"We've still got his clothes and toothbrush," he says gently to Regina, Emma in the corner of his vision, "He could stay the night."

Regina nods without hesitation. "Yeah. Of course."

David eases Henry off the couch and he is too big to carry and the sight is absurd, just so that laughter bubbles up out of Emma.

It's been three months of absolute stillness, of nothing but routine and somber normalcy that it almost recalls of the empty days under the curse, so it's apt that it should rupture yet again with Emma coming home.

She wishes it were the same for Zelena. Everyone else has come here with open hearts and with a willingness to forgive and apologize. Her damage with Emma, she supposes, must be dealt with privately.

"We should go. You all look like hell," Regina says, patting Snow on the knee before rising.

"Yeah, sure, I'll walk you guys down," Emma offers nonchalantly. She stands in that way of hers with her thumbs hooked in her jean pockets and it betrays her tone, and Regina knows it's because she wants to talk.

Snow and David chime their goodnights. Outside Regina tosses Zelena the keys to have the car warmed up, which she takes wordlessly.

"It's nice to have you back," Regina speaks first, leaning on the doorway entrance of the building.

Emma looks up and perhaps her eyes glimmer, just a little it. "You mean that?"

"If only it means people stop talking to me as if you had died."

They laugh but it is punctuated with a ghost of a grimace. They're silent for a while, with Regina staring at their shoes and Emma picking at something underneath her nails.

"Listen," she finally says, and it's deeper, smoother. "I could stand here and explain myself all night, but … I wanted to say, I _want_ to say, that I'm sorry. Really. I haven't been fair for the longest time, and I'm going to be better. For Henry, for the family I have here –– for Zelena, even. But most importantly for _you_."

The promise is meant to assure but it makes Regina uneasy, makes her instinctively want to inch away. "Are you still …"––she can see the anticipation in Emma's eyes, and it's probably something she shouldn't touch the day Emma returns, but––"Do you still feel resentful about Robin?"

But Emma's eyes flutter down, and she bears a sad smile. "Love is a decision, and you made yours." She adds, more brightly and with a light touch to Regina's arm with a fist, "I'll get over myself."

_There is nothing wrong_. Regina's mouth forms the warmest smile. "Goodnight Emma."

"Wait––I have a question."

"Yes?"

"Can I have my job back?"

Regina hesitates, and she might laugh. "Yes, but––in your absence, I may have had to make additions––"

It takes a few seconds for Emma to understand, and then she groans. "You really get your hands in the police force, don't you?"

"_Goodnight_, Emma_._"

* * *

Regina doesn't even have time to contemplate the approaching days with Emma back once she gets in the car. It's like she's entered a whole new realm of existence. Zelena is slumped down in the passenger seat in a lethargic manner and Regina has to ask as she starts the engine.

"Do you want to talk?"

"Not particularly," Zelena answers short of a sigh, and Regina doesn't really know what else she expected when it's been this song and dance lately. And even when they're lucky, it's been all talking but no _saying_. "I'm just tired and awaiting reunion with my bed."

The car reverses out of the parking slot and with a change of gear eases onto the gravelly street where Zelena was allegedly pushed down three months ago. The street lighting is piss-poor, and Regina makes a mental note to have those fixed, but somehow the dull yellow light bordering on a distasteful green makes her think of Tinkerbell. Perhaps it's because whenever Regina tries to talk to her, she too refuses to be any kind of enlightening.

"You still haven't told me what happened between you and Tinkerbell," Regina says, and she can see Zelena shift in her seat from the corner of eye. "Neither of you have."

"The same thing that always happens," she grumbles in response. "I drive people away."

She leans away from Regina and onto the door, closing her eyes to mark the end of the conversation.

Something gathers in Regina's throat and there's an ache between her lungs, but she doesn't press any further. She just wishes that there was something more she could do besides dragging her around to see people she feels uncomfortable with so that Zelena, so capable of such beautiful vibrance, can stop feeling so lonely.

When they get out of the car Regina can see that Zelena had been quietly crying, but this time she doesn't ask. She doesn't even act like she noticed.

* * *

And then in the middle of the night, Regina is pulled right out of slumber by the sounds of Zelena screaming.

She bolts out of bed, tries to fight the disorienting rush of blood pulling her down, and fears the worst –– but she finds only Zelena in her room, writhing under her blanket, twisting and crying out.

Regina hasn't had to deal with night terrors since Henry was about four years old, and she'll always be plagued by the memory of her angel baby boy being struck into such a merciless state of fear, but she always knew never to wake him –– but this, there is something so vulgar, that Regina has to wake her up. She has to.

"Zelena," Regina tries gently, letting her hands hover in the space around Zelena's head because now she's almost hitting herself, "Wake up. It's fine. I'm here."

"I don't wan't to go back!_" _she cries, and Regina has no clue where back is but it hurts, "Don't make me go back!"

"_Zelena_," Regina presses with her own kind of desperation, and perhaps Zelena had felt it in the depths of her sleep because then she bursts upright and awake, gasping in hungrily for air. She holds out her arms in front of her, rubbing at them incessantly as if to get some invisible substance off of her skin.

Regina immediately conjures her a glass of water which she gratefully takes, and it reminds her so much of the first time Zelena had awakened in the hospital, scared and needful.

Only to clamming up like a shell right after. "Sorry," is all she says, after a few minutes of calming down, looking down at her lap. "And thanks."

"You gave me a heart attack," Regina comments lightheartedly but just above a whisper, "I thought ––" She just takes a long look at Zelena and it hurts her, so, so much.

Zelena remains immobile. Perhaps she's not really awake, but her responsiveness is isolated in the movement of her throat. She is still rubbing her hands, though not as desperately.

"I'm sorry I scared you. It's nothing to worry about."

She hesitates on every other word. "Okay. Okay. If you need me––"

"I know." Perhaps when Zelena finally looks at her, she can see the effects she has, because then she adds with affection: "Go back to sleep, _hermanita_. I'm fine."

* * *

The coffee has just finished brewing when Zelena walks barefoot into the kitchen. She looks brighter, as she does every morning, but she's like a lightbulb from the dollar store, and after sleep is just a new purchase.

"You haven't gone with me to the office in a while. I thought maybe today…"

"Ah, yes," Zelena says, eyes still only sort of open as she pours a copious amount of creamer into her coffee mug, "Bring-your-sister-to-work days. Missed those."

"You don't have to read over drafts of legislation papers, if that is where your qualms lay," Regina quips back, handing Zelena the sugar. "No more than a teaspoon for you."

She adds in two anyway. "Yeah. I'll go."

Regina finishes stirring her own coffee when she looks up to see Zelena staring at her. She can't quite describe her gaze, but it's not threatening, it's not inquisitive.

"What?"

Zelena shifts her weight to her other leg as she walks past her, not without ruffling the back of Regina's hair, much to her annoyance. "Nothing. Since Henry's not here, does that mean I get his serving of Fruit Loops?"

* * *

Regina almost has Zelena laughing again. Just as long as she doesn't touch the subject of Tinkerbell or Gold, she has her caught with her vague digs at Snow White and tales of equestrian mishaps when she was a child. She almost has Zelena feeling safe to speak with her on more than just a superficial level, almost has her talking about her mother and how they used to sew together, how speckled with needlepoints her fingertips were by the end of the day.

Almost, but then the front entrance opens and it's Gold with his cane and dark circles under his eyes and his teeth-baring smirk. Regina looks at Zelena and she's paralyzed, and something flares up in Regina's stomach.

"Madam mayor," he greets, ignoring Zelena next to her completely, dropping a manila envelope onto her desk. "I believe you requested these."

She'd do good to grab his cane and hit him, but she'd never hear the end of it from Belle and various gossiping townspeople. He's already at the door when she tells Zelena to wait where she is and rises to walk after him.

"What do you think you're doing?" she demands just after the door is shut behind her. "Do I need to remind you of the agreement we had reached the last time you threatened my sister?"

He knits his brow in annoyance, facing her only over his shoulder. "You asked for the transcripts for the last council meeting, and I gave them to you."

"Yeah, I asked for them to be on my desk _the day of_, not a week later and the one day I happen to have Zelena here."

Gold pivots entirely and looks at her dead in the eye, and Regina hopes he knows better than to even _try_ to intimidate her. "I already told you. I have no intentions to harm her." Then he bares his teeth again, "Even though she _deserves _it."

"_Rumple,_ I am _warning_ you."

"I spent _hundreds_ of years looking for Baelfire. Everything I _did_, was to find him."

"You ruined so many lives in your endeavor, including _mine_," she reminds him, keeping their volume in check for any eavesdroppers. "You have so much more retribution to pay. Don't even start talking about hers."

He eases back, then, chin up and looking down in that way where it all clicks and Regina can feel her entire upper body burn.

"Your love can blind you, my dear. You were blind with your mother. Who is to say it's not the same with your sister?"

How he could ever _dare_, she doesn't know. "I'm not playing this game with you."

Gold gives her a disapproving tightening of the lips and if only that worked on her anymore.

She goes back inside her office and Zelena's playing Piano Tiles on Regina's iPhone.

"Are you alright?"

Zelena evades the question, sets the phone down. "You know what, maybe I should stay in the house."

Regina hesitates, because it seems more apparent each day that protecting Zelena is like taking care of a flower in winter, then nods with feigned neutrality. "Sure. Sure, I'll take you. Let's go. Emma's shift starts soon, we'll pick up Henry first."

"Okay."

Zelena stops saying yes whenever Regina asks if she'd like to go somewhere, and eventually Regina stops asking.

* * *

During a particularly idle day at the office she decides to check in on Emma and Robin, and a dart almost hits her straight in the face. She opens the door at its length to reveal Emma and Robin wide-eyed and mouths agape, and Regina raises an eyebrow.

"I told you it was a bad idea hanging the board over there," Emma mutters to him, and Regina has half a mind to roast the two of them, but she's just walked in on the two of them taking up the late Graham's singular hobby.

"Must be a serious case you're working on," Regina says, arms crossed, and anything else about her would communicate that they have a scolding coming on save for the broadest smile on her face.

"Chill out," Emma says in that particular whine of hers, pulling the darts from the board and stuffing them back into a desk drawer. "We haven't gotten a call yet."

"There is always the existence of something they call paperwork. And Robin, shame on you for letting the sheriff pull you into these work habits."

He shrugs from where he sits and puts his legs up on the desk. "You heard the lass, 'chill out'." A white-teeth smile floods his face and if he were anyone else, she wouldn't be beaming back and something would have been set on fire by now.

Emma sighs when the phone rings. "There we go."

Regina walks to stand next to Robin as Emma takes the call. "How is she?" she asks quietly.

"Lively," he answers her. He looks up at her and she finds no tension. "I wonder what she did while she was gone."

"Well, her old job _was_ finding people and possibly beating the crap out of them and turning them in for money. It must have been therapeutic."

"She's actually very funny. She told me this joke, it's rather good. It goes––"

"Oh, no, please," Regina groans and tosses her head to the side, but Robin keeps on.

"Aw, come on. It goes –– knock knock?"

Regina sighs. "Who's there?"

"Delores."

"Delores who."

"Delores my shepherd, I shall not want."

Regina _snorts_.

Emma puts down the phone and joins them. "You two better not be talking smack," she quips, and Regina's never seen her smirk at Robin without it being laced with contempt. "Looks like some suspicious activity in the clock tower. Gepetto saw some kids sneaking in or something."

"Right," Robin says, easing himself up from the chair. "Will report to you after––"

"Hold on there arrow man," Emma stops him, putting on her now-worn red jacket. "I'm coming too. If they got the good stuff, I want in, you know?"

She gives Regina a warm look before she goes out the door and Regina is actually stunned. It settles and she says, gently, because good things like these could never last, could they: "She's been homesick. It won't always be this way, I hope you know that."

Robin kisses her on the head and rubs her shoulder, then makes his way out. "Emma Swan has a big, good heart, love. I hope you know _that_."

She does.

* * *

And then week later Regina is sitting on a log in the woods, several yards from Robin where he is adjusting Emma's grip on the bow, aiming at a makeshift target pinned to a tree. Whether it is Emma making it up to Regina by befriending him, or making it easier for herself by not despising him, Regina is altogether astounded by the present conditions in which they all find themselves in.

Even if she can't explain it, she likes––_loves_––everything about it.

"Alright. Now let go," Robin commands, backing away.

Emma's arrow misses the center of the target by a few feet to the left.

"Better than the last, at least."

"Yeah well," Emma eases the bow down, her bare arms shaking slightly from having them so still and controlled, "Why do you use longbow anyway. It's not really modern deputy material, you know what I mean?"

"That's why I use a crossbow now."

"Listen, Hawkeye, if we wanted a crossbow tossing cop then we'd have had Granny as sheriff a long time ago."

Emma sticks her tongue out of her smiling mouth as Robin collects the bow from her, and if Regina didn't know any better she'd say he was smitten.

He goes forth to find the arrows and pull down the targets and Emma sits down next to Regina. She offers a bottle of water and Emma gratefully accepts.

"You're awfully quiet," she says before gulping down the water like she'd been parched for days.

"I like watching the two of you," Regina replies, and when she says it there's a kind of warmth building up in her. "Emma, thank you."

Emma shrugs, gingerly puts the cap back on the bottle. "He's really chill. He kind of reminds me of the one foster brother I actually liked."

"He taught you how to shoot things, too?"

"BB guns. I gave him a scar on the back of his shoulder, actually, and that's why they had me out," Emma laughs to mask the mirthlessness underneath.

Robin returns with the bow and arrows in hand, crunching leaves in his wake and taking a seat on the rock across from them and starts putting them away in their cases. "All six arrows. Last one was tricky, had to climb for it."

"I thought there were seven?" Regina jokes and Robin gives her a mild glare, and she can't help but grin widely. "I could kiss the two of you."

"I wouldn't be averse to that."

"Don't be weird," Emma says, and anyone else would have seen it as a sneer. Then out of the blue, like she'd been holding on to this question: "How's Zelena?"

Regina stretches her legs outward and crosses them at the ankles. "I asked Henry if he wanted to come with us, if he wanted to spend time with us. He said he would've liked to but he thinks he should stay with Zelena since she refuses to go anywhere with me."

"Are you two having a rough time?" Robin asks.

"I don't know," she sighs helplessly. "Something is off. I just wish she'd _speak_ to me about it. I even asked if she wanted to see Dr. Hopper but she shot that down before I even finished the question."

"She's lonely," Emma says quietly, and something about her voice and the way her lines soften tells Regina that she's speaking from a place of knowledge. "Sometimes, suddenly having people doesn't fix that. You could be surrounded by love and still feel alone."

"Maybe we all just need to try a bit harder. It's time we've made proper friends with your sister," Robin offers.

"Yeah, we could do lunch at Granny's, or something. No intense family dinner like last time. Just the four of us."

And if this had been anytime before today, Regina would've refused, but now she can't exactly protest the mixing of Robin and the touchy parts of her life when here she is sitting with him, Emma, and the arrows he taught her to shoot.

"Thank you, the both of you," Regina says genuinely, and the more she thinks about their seemingly small offer the more she might cry at the realization that she needs help with Zelena and she needs it from people she can trust. "I'll see."

She feels the warm palm of Emma's hand on her shoulder. "Don't think this is your fault. It's not."

"I suppose." That's what she'd like to think anyhow.

* * *

When the date rolls around, it's to everyone's surprise when it's Emma that engages with Zelena the most. It's a strange thing when Regina thinks about it; three months ago she had told Zelena that going to Emma and to the diner had meant looking for trouble, and now here they are expecting her to find the opposite.

After ordering Emma talks about music, and Regina can see how easily bland this conversation could be, but to people like Zelena and Robin, it's like a window to the world; Zelena shyly brings up ABBA, Emma smiles broadly and lists some of her favorites that in reality she only knows because of _Mamma Mia_. Robin wants to know more about this "Mumford and his sons", and Regina _has_ to talk about how the first song she ever heard was by Donna Summer.

("Why do I have the weirdest image of you terrorizing my mom to _Bad Girls_?"

"Maybe because it happened at some point, Swan.")

And when their food arrives it's Emma who asks if Zelena would like to try a bit of what she has, and then it turns into four-way sample exchange even though both Regina and Emma have had every thing on the menu at this point.

There's such a warmth in Regina's heart that she forgets to check if Zelena has completely thawed. She forgets that what happens next is an actual possibility that she didn't account for and should have.

The door jingles and Emma, facing the entrance, doesn't think twice about waving to the person walking through it. Zelena blanches next to her and Regina has to turn around, and of course, _of course_.

Tinkerbell makes eye contact with her and turns around without saying anything and the door jingles again. Regina's afraid to look at Zelena. She's expecting to see her close back up, to see her stiffen in discomfort and bottled rage, but instead she turns her head to see her slacken in resignation.

"What was that all about?" Emma queries, and perhaps it's the final straw for Zelena because then she gets up, puts her coat back on and walks out.

Emma and Robin wear an identical face of confusion and Regina feels like her insides have been wrought.

"This is not happening." She rises from her seat and paces out of the diner, and Zelena had not left less than ten seconds ago and she can't seem to find the back of her retreating head anywhere. Regina tangles her fingers in her own hair and digs at her scalp because she may just go _mad_.

* * *

She goes back in only to pay the bill and doesn't have time when Emma reaches for her arm. She has to shrug off her loose grip because this is not happening, and Regina has had enough.

Regina rounds to the parking lot and finds her car missing, that Zelena had taken it. "_Dammit_," she almost cries, and in her frustration she begins to run home when she realizes that she doesn't have to. Violet smoke encircles her and the gravel below her feet is replaced by the marble of the foyer.

The cloud clears, and the dark silhouette before her takes the full form of Zelena.

"Don't run off like that," Regina yells, and she feels like she's talking to a _child_, but even a child would be easier to handle than this. "You didn't have to do that. You could've––you could have been––"

"Oh, what, then?" Zelena screams back, and if Regina weren't so _sick_ herself she would be glad that she is finally getting something out of her. "I could've been what? More compliant to your little _games_? I can't believe I've been made into such a fool by you."

"What?" Regina freezes.

"Do you get a kick out of that?" she continues to fire, "Do you? Making me feel like I belong and then littering the place with reminders that I don't really?"

"Do you think I had Tinkerbell come by on purpose? I don't even know what is going _on_ with you two, because you won't tell me––"

"But you knew about Rumple." It comes out like a cry, and Regina is still so angry and confused but now she is also _hurt_––"I told you and you knew and you still––"

"What?" Regina implores. "I still what?"

Zelena decides to stop opening her mouth and Regina is so fed up, so––"For fuck's _sake_, Zelena, _talk to me_!"

"_You_," she shouts back immediately, "You have love _all_ around you. You have Emma and Robin looking at you like you're the bloody moon, idiots one and two adore you now and you have Henry, who would trade _nothing_ over you, and––"

"And you? What do you have from us? From _me_?"

"_Pity,_" Zelena nearly spits, and now there are violent tears rolling down her cheeks and her hands are held out and shaking but she dares not step closer to Regina, "Because I'm just––I'm an _accessory_, a _pet_! I'm cooped up in this place and I can't go anywhere without you or gods know what happens to me, no one even looks at me so much as spits on me and I'll just––I'll be dependent on you for as long as I live. I'll never have a life of my own, I can never be _happy_ here––"

Zelena chokes on a sob and she just keeps backing away from Regina like she'll hurt her for ever opening her mouth.

Regina feels herself pulled down by gravity and anything she could have ever thought to say dies in her throat. Nothing she could say would matter, would pick up the pieces of glass that have shattered between the two of them, so she walks out, just as Zelena did. She walks out and goes straight to the vault.


	4. Chapter 4

** A/N**: here is the penultimate chapter. bountiful thanks to onella, amy, amanda, addie (THE TRIPLE A'S) and steph for feedback and flouncing. for the most part, this chapter is it plotwise for this fic. the epilogue awaits. thanks again for hangin x

once you fall down, there is only up:

* * *

Zelena feels sick. In between Rumple's visitation and this morning she had only felt decline, she had only felt her entire world go dark. But now she feels _sick_, and it gathers right in the core of her stomach, pulling everything to its center. She brings her knees to her chest and she is constricted.

Regina walked away. Zelena spoke and she walked away. The thrumming in her head, the merciless whispers that fill the silence, they tell her that Rumpelstiltskin was right. That she was right for harboring the part of her that believed he was.

Her wall clock ticks closer to two, and she doesn't know what to do if Henry comes home. She doesn't want to be seen. No one wants to see her, anyway. She hugs her pillow and it stings because in the end it all comes from Regina.

She hears the door unlock, and soon the thuds of Regina's feet make it up the stairs. They crescendo before they stop outside her door and Zelena closes her eyes and expects the worst.

But when the door opens, Regina has eyes of glass and in her hand, lurid green against her warm desert skin, the pendant glimmers.

"I can give it back to you," she says, the words shaking out of her mouth, "Here. I have it now. Take it."

Everything in Zelena's body stills, the voices bite their tongues. "What?"

"I'll give you back your magic and you can go. You can find a place where you can be –– you can be _happier, _and _secure_, and ––"

_Go_. "You don't want me here anymore."

Water pebbles in Regina's eyes as her lip quivers and Zelena doesn't know at all whether or not these are tears of a crocodile.

"No. No, it's not that––I––I'd been doing everything wrong." Regina steps forward and Zelena's instinct is to back away, but she has her hands out like she's begging, beseeching––"When you were screaming at me about how trapped and alone you felt, I felt like … I felt like Cora, I felt like Rumple––I felt like every person who had done the same to me some way, and that was never what I was supposed to be. Not to you. Not to anyone. So please, take it."

She holds the pendant flat on her palm and extends her hand but Zelena is so full of something else, all of Regina's words are ringing _wrong_––

"So, what, just releasing me out into the wild is an act of clearing your conscience?"

"No––Zelena, don't make this difficult––"

"No. No." She rises to her feet, the sick magnetic core unwinding her body, bringing her somewhere else that isn't here. The familiar feeling of pride––and a ghost of something else, unexplainable––takes over her. "I'm leaving but I'm not taking that back. I don't need _you_ to grant me anything."

She pushes past Regina and the gem falls onto the carpet with a dull bounce.

"What? Where are you going?" Regina calls after her.

"To fall in a ditch, maybe!" she cries at the bottom of the stairs, frustrated and hurt and just _needing to get out_, "And don't you dare follow me, or ––"

Her throat dries.

"Or?"

"Or I _will_ hurt you." She's not meant to be saying these words, she's not who she was but she should've done something unforgivable, she should have. "I _will_ make you regret ever showing me mercy."

Regina's mouth hangs open and Zelena runs as far as she can.

* * *

It's not hard to get lost in the maze of trees; it's not long before the town is merely a foggy backdrop against the wooden towers. Her feet ache and she's never been a runner, she's never had to strain her lungs, but it's only her body that is feeling. Her mind, her soul, are shut off completely.

She just doesn't want to cry. She hates when they fight. She hates wanting to love Regina. She hates her and she hates that she has become her _world_.

The further she wanders the emptier she feels. Then the silence becomes maddening and it's only when the color of the bark reminds her of Regina's eyes that it flicks––violently _smashes––_a switch. She takes off her now scratched and beaten flats and throws them against thick trunks––the sharp thuds aren't loud enough for her so she picks them up again and flings them harder, never minding the way twigs and leaves and pebbles scrape under her bare feet, never minding how ridiculous she may look.

Because she's somehow convinced herself that Regina only loves her when she's powerless (she throws a shoe, harder), and she only began to love her when she was an inch away from death and in her arms (she picks them up); Regina can only continue to love her when she can have everything that Zelena could never be allowed (and throws again); Regina can only let her go when Zelena realizes it's not enough (and again).

At some point she only follows after one shoe, the other one lost in the darkening wood and then she soon forgets it altogether and starts swinging her fists against rough bark, shouting in anguish. She keeps punching and punching and waits for the sting, waits for the blood––but there's nothing.

Every time her skin makes contact with the tree, the faintest white light crackles between them. Every time she swings her arm harder, trying to draw blood, she's instead overcome with the smell of laundry, hot cocoa in the morning, the feel of Regina's hand at the hospital. She starts kicking with the exposed mounds of her feet, sure to bruise and splinter, but instead she remembers pancakes and flour on faces and waking up to toes. She pushes her entire body against the trunk, beating, beating away, and the light just gets brighter, and now the memory of Regina as she sung to stop her tears takes the place of physical pain.

Zelena is trying to abuse this poor tree––is trying to hurt herself––but the spell cast by Regina months ago won't fucking let her. The spell cast with magic made from _true love_. True love for _her_.

Zelena drops to the ground and _bawls_.

"_Fuck_," she cries to no one in particular, tears falling ruthlessly onto open palms. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

* * *

The skies darken early this time of year, but nonetheless when it dims, Zelena thinks to herself that if she is not found now, it's because nobody wants her to be. She herself doesn't know whether she wants it, but she knows that she doesn't deserve it. She doesn't deserve what she has, what she _could_ have if only she weren't so––so _stupid_.

Then Emma shows up.

She sees her from a distance ahead waving around a flashlight and pacing in every direction. She's not ready to look at anyone right now, her eyes are not dry enough, her lungs not full enough. So she waits until Emma finally manages to shine the light on her and runs to her, the sound of leaves and twigs crunching underneath her heavy boots punctuating the air.

"Zelena," Emma sighs deeply with relief.

"I'm sorry," Zelena blurts out, not looking her in the eye. She'd been chanting for forgiveness all this while that it's the first thing to come out, but Emma scoffs.

"Yeah, me too. Maybe we'll talk about it over cheesecake sometime." She removes her jacket, crouches down to Zelena's level and puts it over her back. "Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Can you walk?"

"In theory."

Emma raises a brow in the light of her torch.

"I've lost my shoes."

She looks down at her feet. "Oh. I see. Here––" Emma closes her eyes and flicks her hand toward her feet, and in a moment they are tucked soundly into the worn flats. "Let's get you out of here. The car's not far ahead."

Emma stands and extends an arm, eases Zelena to her feet.

She clings to the lapels of the jacket and tightens it around her. "Did Regina send you?"

Emma puts a cautious hand at her back and points the light ahead as they walk. "Yeah."

"Why?"

About a minute passes as they navigate through the wood. Emma's face is just a dark shadow of blue, but she can hear the smile in her voice: "_Ohana_ means family, right?"

Zelena pauses, then the sound that leaves her mouth is something of a laugh and a sob. She knows now truly that this is not the same Emma who told her that she was right but outnumbered. "Right."

* * *

When she imagined being brought to the sheriff's station for the first time, she imagined it in a different context. Regina was sending her away instead of searching for her, and Zelena would be in a cot behind the bars instead of sitting on a couch chair holding a hot paper cup of green tea that Emma hastily prepared in the break room.

Emma trades in the jacket over Zelena's shoulders for a proper blanket and she likes this much better than when she was yelling at her and throwing her to the ground.

"Regina will be here soon," she says, and now in this better light Zelena can see that even though Emma isn't as vibrant as she was in the diner––a ghost of a line is perpetually on her brow––she is definitely softer, beginning to find her way.

"Thanks," Zelena replies genuinely. Then adds when Emma sits behind her desk, "I think I like you better when you're not forcing yourself to like me."

Emma winces slightly, but she's not surprised. "Is that what you think I was doing?"

Zelena stills, adding this misperception to her list of fuck ups, then shrugs. The tea grows lukewarm and Zelena downs the whole thing, feeling it in her throat and down into her stomach where the warmth radiates, before discarding the cup.

Footsteps become audible from outside and Zelena eyes the mosaic window of the door with held breath, and even when she can see that it's Regina's blurry outline, she doesn't let go.

She doesn't enter immediately and instead lingers there, and Emma rises from her chair. Zelena watches as she opens the door just slightly, peeking her head through to the other side. A few words are muffled in exchange and then it's Emma going into the corridor and Regina walking in.

Regina sighs like the world has been picked up from her shoulders, and Zelena's vision is getting blurrier with each blink. She takes careful steps toward Zelena, keeping their distance respectable but not too far to signify an irreparable rift.

The smile on her face is nervous. "This doesn't look like a ditch."

"I told you not to follow me."

"I didn't. Emma did."

Zelena's caught between frowning and laughing, because when Regina says that right now after all that's happened she can't tell whether she's being a smart ass or if she actually believed––"Did you really think I would've kept my word if you had?"

She doesn't expect the answer to come so easily out of Regina. It's a soft, assuring, gentle, "No. Of course not."

Regina's believed in her all this time, like she said she would on day _one_, and Zelena has repaid her with silence and distrust.

Zelena's face scrunches around the nose and the water rises up and out of her eyes and she has to stand, has to close the distance and Regina's arms are warm and welcoming and her kind mouth is pressed against her blanketed shoulder and Zelena cries and cries.

"I fucked up, sis." Her throat feels so tight. "I'm so sorry."

Regina raises her head and rests her chin atop Zelena's shoulder, shushes her like a mother would and it's so easy, it's so easy to forget that she's her little sister, "I'm sorry, too."

"No," Zelena shakes her head, nearly clutches at Regina, "You have nothing to be sorry for. You owe me nothing."

She hears a scoff in her ear.

"Shut up. We're okay. _Greenguita_."

The name makes Zelena gurgle laughter through her incessant tears. "_Bruja_."

Regina chuckles but her breaths are watery, her body is quaking ever so slightly. Zelena has been thus far a burden to her but Regina's still crying, still holding her in a strong hug and giving no indication that she wants to let go.

Regina owes her nothing and yet––

"I love you, you know? Very much."

Zelena less than half a year ago would _puke_. Zelena now hugs her tighter, turns her head to kiss the hairline above her temple. "I love you, too."

When they separate Regina is soft with swollen eyelids and a pink stuff nose and Zelena thinks she may look the same, maybe worse.

"Let's go home, yeah?" Zelena says, watching Regina's eyes brighten at the word. Stray tears run down her cheeks and Zelena catches them with her thumbs. "I need a bath."

Regina laughs, crystal bright. "Yeah. I could smell you from all the way outside."

* * *

"Tinkerbell used the pixie dust for me," Zelena tells her quietly as they sit cross legged on her bed. She plays with the damp ends of her hair and she feels clean and new and fed and they're back to looking stupid in their matching pajamas but there's still slate to be cleared.

"What?" Regina replies incredulously, like it had been the last thing she would have guessed. "And?"

"Pointed straight to her."

"Oh." Regina deflates slowly. Her shoulders sag, like it was her heart that was breaking. "Is that why she…"

Zelena nods.

She begins to say something but bites her tongue, perhaps something for later. "Was it because of that? Did you stop talking to me because of that?"

"No," Zelena corrects, begins to get a sick feeling in her stomach and there's a dull weight against her heart. "No, it wasn't that, never, it was––I didn't tell you, Rumple told me that I––he said that I couldn't trust you. I was '_perpetually leashed_.'"

"You thought I… you believed him." It's said as if the words were _I didn't do enough_; Zelena wonders how many times she has to break Regina's beautiful, bright heart.

"It's not like I wanted to," she defends and it sounds pathetic as soon as it leaves her mouth, but she keeps going. "And I was just––I was feeling jealous again. Old habits die hard, you know?"

"Hm."

"And I don't have the best history when it comes to things like this, do I? Things like trust and love and whatever."

She sees the lines on Regina's forehead soften just so, but they're still there. She thinks about the people in between Daniel and Henry and she realizes, when Regina tightens her mouth ever so slightly, that neither did she. And yet here she is filled to the brim with love.

The difference between the two of them––and there are so many, but the glaring difference now––is that Regina is not a coward. Zelena is.

"I'm sorry." Zelena closes her hand around Regina's fingers. They're like a chain. "I really am."

And then as Regina looks down a tear drops from her eye and she's frowning and Zelena's heart stops and how much more, how many more times?

"Listen," she implores, their hand-chain tightening. "We're okay. But what you said to me, before you ran off. I know you didn't mean it, I know you're different now, but…"

"That can't happen again," Zelena finishes for her. "It _won't_ happen again. Ever."

"Thank you. I know it seems ridiculous––"

She thinks back to _what did I ever do to you_ and _you were born_, how she used to live off of hurting her and hurting her and all the people who have lived through hurting her. "No. It doesn't. It's not."

* * *

Zelena wakes up as dawn still unravels out her window. The low rumble of passing cars provide a baseline for the high chirps and twitters of the birds, and she's still so uncertain about tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that, but right now is peace after a storm. Right now is shelter after rain.

There's a faint shuffling out her door, and then a knock too soft to be Regina's. It opens just enough for someone to peer inside, and Zelena knows by then that it is Henry.

"_Tía_?" he whispers through the open sliver.

"I'm here, Henry."

He comes in with the breakfast tray in his hands, toast with butter and fried eggs and orange juice, proceeding with such cautious movement and it breaks her heart.

"Mom said you might be still tired. I thought I could get you something before she drops me off to school."

Zelena sits up and he places the tray down in front of her, the legs firm against the mattress. It makes her think of the early days when she wasn't exactly allowed to dine with the family just yet, and when Regina brought her food this way, more often than not without the luxury of a tray. Full circle, she supposes.

"You made this for me?" She smiles, and it echoes on his face when he nods, less tentative and more free to be her little wonderful nephew. "Why don't you sit," she offers while beginning to spread the butter on the bread. "You look like you want to talk."

Henry sits on the edge, careful not to let his shoes touch the beddings. "Can I ask what happened?"

She scrapes the knife repeatedly on the toast without looking up, trying to fashion her fuck-up of the year into better words. "A very, very big misunderstanding, is all. But it's alright now."

"Good," he beams. She wonders why she ever thought his heart was untrue, too. "I'm glad."

"Me, too." She bites down on the buttered toast and gives him an exaggerated thumbs up, eliciting a laugh. Then, later: "I'm sorry, kid. I know you don't like it when family fights."

He shrugs. "It happens. What matters is how fights end. It's how people grow."

"Such a wise boy," she coos just to make him roll his eyes. "Thank you for breakfast. You are a splendid chef."

"It's literally just toast and eggs, _tía_."

"Might as well be gourmet to me." She downs the juice in heavy gulps. "Now go, you'll be late for school."

"It's 6:30am."

"Oh. Still."

His smile is endless at the way Zelena's is too. "Fine, okay," he says, rising to bring his cheek next to hers for her to kiss.

"Be good." She pats his face.

"Yeah, yeah."

* * *

It seems pathetic to her, the way her lungs tighten and grow cold once she begins walking out into daylight. Renewal is terrifying, as Regina once told her, and if there is anyone who knows it best, it is her. She could ask her how it is that she doesn't care, but she already knows the answer. She's courageous, and knows that she has better things to care about. Much, much better things.

How numb she feels now to quick glances from people she's never met. How dull words seem when she remembers they'll never mean more to her than the things Regina and Henry tell her.

She goes as far as the park, the sky blanketed by a thin white layer of continuous cloud. Cold air sweeps by and she tucks her fists into the pockets of her coat. An unrecognizable man with a cap pushes a stroller along the pathway; Dr. Hopper's spotted dog naps under a tree curled into Ruby, still in uniform.

Zelena finds an empty bench, sits hunched and with her legs crossed the way Henry does when he sits on the floor and plays video games. People who recognize her pull their small children closer but their tension eases once Zelena does––the surroundings stir in such a minuscule manner that it's not important anymore. She's just another person looking for serenity.

Then she hears a characteristic flutter beside her and someone enters her field of vision and she doesn't have to look directly to know who it is. She scoffs.

"Oh, you're not running off this time?"

"May I sit?" Her voice sounds so small, and it's blended with apology and caution.

Zelena sighs, shrugs. "Do what you want. You seem to do that a lot."

Tinkerbell sits in the same position as she does, twiddles with her thumbs. "I heard what happened. I was worried."

"The way you avoided me this whole time I'm surprised you thought about me at all."

"I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

"You could've at least told me _why_," Zelena expresses with frustration, finally turning her head to face Tink, whose eyes are truly, truly sad.

"I panicked."

"I gather that. Why?"

"I'm a fairy, Zelena, we aren't––we're not _meant_ to have the things we grant to others."

Zelena knits her brow, and she can't decide if the heaviness below her heart is pity or anger. "That is the _worst_ excuse."

Tinkerbell looks genuinely affronted. "And how come? We just aren't _allowed_––"

"Like how you weren't allowed to help my sister all those years ago."

"I lost my _wings_ for that."

"And now you have them back."

Tinkerbell sighs and shifts her legs so that she's hugging them. Zelena leans back into the bench with a heavy thud. In the distance someone is flying a blue dragon kite.

"How do you do that?" she asks. "How do you get angry at Regina for not immediately jumping into Robin's arms and then run off on me like you did?"

"I'm a hypocritical coward that doesn't really think things through," Tink admits, plain and flat.

It catches Zelena off guard and she has to laugh, she has to. "Had you come to me like that instead I would've forgiven you by now." Then she sighs. "You let destiny dictate others but you won't let it touch you. It's not like we had to do something about it. We didn't have to do _anything _about it."

Tink pauses for what seems like long minutes. "Did you want to?"

The wind dies, and the dragon kite eases down from the sky. The children at the bottom of the string whine.

"Well, why wouldn't I?"

"Do you still?"

Zelena's starting to feel tight in the chest but she wills it to cool. She hesitates, then says with finality: "We'll be friends first."

She looks to Tink, who nods her head. "Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. I'm not going to mess that up this time, I promise."

They wait a while, looking up for when the kite pierces the sky once more. Distant high pitched cheers follow.

"Can I hug you?"

Zelena pauses, then bursts out into laughter and it's so easy for her to open her arms and let Tink wrap hers around her. She allows herself this once to indulge the part of herself that will always have a soft spot for this complete idiot and rests her cheek atop her yellow head.

"I'd only told Regina about the dust yesterday, by the way," she says. "Later I'll give her permission to chew you out. You're forgiven but I think you deserve it."

"Fine. But if she pulls out the fireballs please stop her."

"We'll see."

* * *

Some days Zelena is reminded that not every day is about what happens to her.

Zelena opens the front door and she is greeted with the sight of Emma jolting away from Regina and the latter with her fingers over her mouth. She hasn't quite processed it yet when Emma walks past her with a quick "See you later," but when the door closes and Regina is trying very, very hard to keep the redness in her cheeks under control, Zelena lets a grin flood her face, puts her hands on her hips.

"Y––"

"Don't," Regina cuts in sharply, holding up a warning finger, then turns around to pace to the kitchen, effectively closing the conversation before it's started.

Later she and Henry are leaning on the counter watching Regina aggressively sautéing their chicken breasts. Every time either of them offer to help, Regina agitatedly insists that she's got it, even though she's nearly burned herself twice and keeps muttering to herself something inaudible.

"Whoa," Henry says after a while. "She's _stressed_."

Zelena smirks. "I wonder _why_," she says loud enough for Regina to hear and something on the pan pops.

* * *

Emma joins them for dinner the next week, when Regina's nerves are visibly cooled and Zelena learns to keep her attention passive. It is truly a contrast to when Zelena sat with Emma at the table the first time; instead of frigidity and bitterness etched over every muscle of her being, she is lax, slouching, has her elbows on the table and manners be damned, she at least looks happier.

(Perhaps Zelena catches Regina gazing at Emma, but she's too preoccupied with the lasagna––the original hunger, fulfilled on this same spot half a year ago––they can try to rouse her suspicion all they want but at the end of the day the stuff on her plate is what matters. Until it's gone, anyway.)

"You can take the leftovers to your parents," Regina offers, taking a large tupperware from the kitchen and scooping the lasagna inside. "God knows how horribly they are feeding themselves these days."

"Okay," Emma agrees, wears a particular grin that tells them all that in actuality she'll be having most of it anyway. "Zelena could come with me."

It's unexpected, but Zelena figures that it's because no one is ever done talking. "Yeah, sure," she answers.

"You'll have to take two trips," Regina says, stacking cleared plates and giving half to Henry. "I'm not having her walk home by herself."

"Sure thing."

Zelena drinks up the last of her water and hands her glass to Regina with a scowl. "Will I have to be back before ten, too, mother?"

Regina sticks her tongue out and Henry laughs, and they disappear into the kitchen.

They get to the bug and Zelena keeps the tupperware on her lap (and maybe she can't separate the feelings she had when she first took a seat in Emma's car, when it was dark and lonely and Emma was helping her find her way); Emma puts the keys in and it rumbles to life.

"So how are you?" she asks as she pulls into the road, and to anyone else it would sound like useless small talk, but Zelena knows.

"Better," she replies and means it.

Emma nods, raises the corners of her mouth in a small but genuine smile as she steers around the corner. "That's good."

"And you?"

"Better."

Zelena mirrors her look of satisfaction. "Good."

It's simple, and nothing like a talk she'd have with Regina, but surprisingly it's enough. It's enough and they understand.

When they get to the apartment building, Emma speaks again. "I was reluctant to come back at all, you know." It's said like quiet confession. "I was away and I thought maybe I should stay away."

They begin up the stairs. "What changed?"

"At the end of the day, it's family that matters," she says, and there's something to the way she ascends the steps, "the family you choose and that chooses you back."

The words move Zelena but she masks it. "Hm. Took you long to figure out."

Emma shrugs, takes the tupperware from Zelena as they reach the top of the stairwell. "You think funny when your heart is broken in different ways, you know?"

She knows indeed, but her rule of passive attention breaks when she asks, "Is not your heart broken when you spend time with Regina while she's with Robin?"

Color rises in Emma's cheeks as she jabs the key into the knob. "About that."

As soon as the door opens, Snow's voice bellows in a way Zelena's never heard before. "_Emma Nolan Swan_!"

"Oh god," Emma groans, not crossing under the doorway. "First of all I never agreed to that being part of my name––"

Zelena remains out of sight, and she doesn't know whether she should be scared or if she should laugh.

"What you're doing is unheard of!" The sound of Snow's pacing punctuate her words. "Maybe even perverse. _Regina_? Regina _and _Robin?"

Zelena's mouth turns into a round "o"––surely of all the things she suspected she never thought of _that_––and Emma glances at her uncomfortably. "I think you should wait out here," she mutters before entering and shutting the door.

Curiosity seizes Zelena and she crouches, pressing her ear to the wooden surface.

"Everyone involved is cool with it, that's how this thing _works_." Zelena wonders how much more her eyebrows can raise.

"Emma, I'm sorry, I tried to calm her down," she can hear David say, and he sounds genuinely apologetic.

"How what works? Is that not called cheating? Permissible cheating? That's just not the way things work, Emma, people have one true love. _One_."

"I'm putting the lasagna in the fridge." Emma muffles the farther she moves from the door, her heavy boots short of stomping.

"I'll help make room––"

"You deserve so much better, Emma," Snow begins again, and Zelena has half a mind to burst in there and demand what exactly could be better than _Regina_––"You deserve to be someone's _only_."

"Mom, listen to me." Emma's voice has a new edge. "Needing to be anyone's _only_ was why I was so fucking unhappy in the first place!"

Zelena swears that if a pin had dropped to the floor, she would be able to hear it. Snow is completely silent, and simply envisioning the wide-eyed realization on her face sends her into _hysterics_.

She barks with laughter and perhaps it startles the living hell out of everyone inside cause soon Emma is outside and pulling her downstairs.

"I'm sorry you had to hear that," Emma begins, though she must know by the way Zelena is still having trouble collecting herself that there is nothing to be sorry for.

"I'm sorry for laughing," Zelena apologizes once they get back in the car and she calms down.

Emma stares at her for a moment, but then begins chuckling herself. "Shit happens, I guess."

Zelena likes that phrase. _Shit happens_.

* * *

Zelena trails after Regina as she does her nightly check-in of every room. "How dare you let Snow White know before _me_."

Regina rambles on like perhaps this is the last minute she'll ever have to speak, overusing her hands in gesture. "Look. It was planned. I didn't plan to love two people at the same time. We're all very fond of each other and we made an _agreement_, perfectly transparent and healthy and consensual. You know contrary to whatever everyone else thinks you can indeed have more than one love, even at a time, it doesn't have to be a constant battle of who-gets-to-be-with-who, pixie dust be damned. Love is a decision and I made mine. I don't know about Oz, I know it wasn't something that was heavily practiced back in the Enchanted Forest but still, this is a completely––"

"Oh _shut up_, I'm not gonna bully you about it. Good for you. Truly."

They stop in the hallway and something glistens in Regina's eye; suddenly she's ducking her head and inviting Zelena's arms around her and she feels small, like after every beautiful thing she is she still needs validation. Zelena hugs tight and tells her again and again that she deserves the world.

(And to fuck pixie dust. It could only ever hope to scratch the surface of Regina's soul.)

* * *

When she wakes up the next morning something is different. The air feels lighter, yet there's something in it. Her fingertips tingle and it's not just cause she slept with her head on them, no––the feeling is familiar like hearing an old name, like the scent of the woods around her parents' home. There's a tinge of fright attached to the feeling, an undercurrent of reckless desire. She sits up, and a light catches her eyes.

On the end table next to her bed rests the pendant. Regina had placed it there, perhaps after days and days of contemplation, perhaps just by remembering after forgetting. In any case, the message is clear: this renewal is incomplete without this detail. A choice is to be made and it is hers completely now.

She picks it up without really thinking, and slowly but surely the magic hugs her palm in reunion, awakening a deep and heavy hum, and it's funny to her now––that this was her security, her shelter. She used to think that without it she may as well be dead.

It's funny, because she feels it now, but it is not as warm, not as bright as what she feels with Regina and Henry and _here_ and she would've never imagined. Never.

The pendant is tucked away under some clothes in her dresser and the hum in her body stops and she doesn't miss it. It is arguably the easiest decision she's made to date.

* * *

(Zelena doesn't notice, no one will really notice, but the gem begins to lose it's emerald sheen. Slowly, slowly, as she chooses to _live_ over withering, chooses _love,_ it returns to the crystal bright white that had been when she first wore it around her neck.

The last of its hue fades and then it shatters with finality, and no one knows that it is rendered useless until one day Tink kisses Zelena on the mouth and she accidentally plants a garden.)


	5. Epilogue

**A/N**: this particular series has come to a close. thanks again to those who have helped me build this ficverse and feelings associated –– amy, amanda, addie, onella, and steph –– and thank you all for reading. also this ending was mostly devised while i was sleep deprived, so...there's a warning for you, maybe. heee

* * *

They bring red roses to Cora's coffin on the anniversary of her passing, just like the ones Regina had laid down the first time, and again when her death was the truest thing left of her.

"You never told me how she died," Zelena says softly, as if any louder the hardness in Regina's eyes would break into tears.

Regina runs her fingers along the edge of the coffin, searching, almost, for a spark, a reminder; she does this all the time when she's down here.

"Snow cursed her heart," she answers with such a hesitating mouth, brows furrowed with stifled rage, "and tricked me into putting it back inside."

Zelena takes hold of her black gloved hands, squeezes tight. Regina exhales.

"I think I'd like to go outside now."

"Of course."

The sky is bluer than it was when they had arrived, cleared of light fog. The sunlight feels crisp against their skin, warm in their clothes. Birds fly past, they chirp, and the slanted lines on Regina's face, Zelena's sagged shoulders––don't fit in.

Regina sinks down to sit at the steps of the mausoleum. Zelena sighs, settles herself down next to her and brings an arm across her shoulders like a protective shell.

"She died in my arms," Regina says as she inclines into Zelena; the hesitation in her voice is gone, "like how you almost did."

"Almost," Zelena repeats, like an _amen_. Like a _thank you_. _Thank you always_.

Regina shifts and wraps her arm around her sister's waist, resting her heavy head on her shoulder, sighing as she once did when Cora had broken her resolve and plunged her back into ways she needed so badly to abandon.

(But Zelena is not Cora. Zelena is home and Cora is––_was_––a prison. Regina exhales again, like she does when Henry kisses her goodnight or smiles at her in the morning.)

"If you could ask her one thing, what would it be?" Regina asks.

Zelena tenses her shoulders, her mouth forming a small frown at the question. "Well," she begins, rubbing Regina's arm absently, "I always thought I'd ask her what it was that I was missing. Why I wasn't enough to keep."

"You know that it was never because of _you_," Regina reminds, nudging Zelena with her body.

"Now I do."

Regina shifts, now sitting upright with their arms retracted, the lines on her face softer. Zelena scoots back to lean back against the door.

"Now I suppose I wouldn't really… I didn't know her as you did. I would ask her about _her_, maybe."

"It wouldn't really be just one question, then, would it?"

Zelena puts the bottom of her boot to Regina's thigh and leaves dust and dirt on the black fabric of her pants, grins with her teeth bared when Regina throws her a narrow-eyed glare, grumbles while patting the mark away.

"And you?"

"A lot of things," Regina answers, still brushing off the dirt. "What about loving me could have made her so weak. And the like."

Regina turns her head to her and Zelena tightens her mouth, lets her head loll back. "Parents. Ever so damaging. And when they're not, well––you know."

"Yeah."

Then Regina catches Zelena looking at her in that fond or proud kind of way she does when Regina tells her she loves her or gives her an extra blanket, or when she sees her kiss Henry's head and when she talks about Emma. "You're a miracle, you know that?"

"Shut up."

"You are."

Regina rolls her eyes, but quickly softens; Zelena's words are the kind that she starved for from her own mother. "Thank you."

Zelena swings herself forward, hunching over her knees as if to tell Regina a secret. "Do you ever think about what it would've been like to grow up together? If Cora kept me?"

It elicits a hearty laugh from Regina, though there is something sad beneath. "It could have been fun. You know, if you take pleasure in being called a bastard child, to your face and behind your back alike. Or fighting with our mother. And then fighting with me."

"I don't think I would've fought with you."

"Please."

"I think if I had met you properly, I think all I would've wanted to do was protect you."

The words come out of Zelena's mouth so easily and there's something in Regina's eye again. Perhaps a branch.

"You don't say things like that to me on the anniversary of our mother's death."

Zelena loops her arm around Regina's. "Right. Sorry."

Regina absently picks at the skin underneath her nails. "If your time curse went off right now, is that what you would do? Make it so that we could be together?"

"I would, though I'm not sure you'd have wanted me to."

"You're right. I would never trade my life now for one with you tugging at my pigtails."

"Ah, so you were a pigtails kind of child."

"And what were you?"

"Braided crowns."

"Wanted to be queen that badly, huh?"

"Shut your face."

Then Regina pauses, tilts her head quizzically. "There's something I've never thought to ask you."

"What?"

"Do you even like the color green?"

Zelena blinks, but then she laughs. "No. No, I like lavender."

"So purple, then."

Zelena stops smiling. "_Lavender._"

Regina grins. "So _purple_, then."

"Maybe I would've fought with you often," Zelena mumbles with a shrugged mouth and hunched shoulders and Regina pinches her arm playfully. "Then again I've been informed by various media representations that that is what sisters are supposed to do."

"There are not many sisters like us."

"Well maybe there are."

"Yes, many pairs of siblings have undergone separation leading up to witchcraft and curses and…flying monkeys."

"Sure they have. Didn't you pay attention when we all watched _Frozen_?"

"But _flying monkeys_."

"Talking snowmen, winged chimps. Same thing."

"You know, I saw you helping Henry with his art project last week, I know for a fact that you're more creative than _flying monkeys_––"

Zelena growls and brings Regina into a headlock, and Regina squeals with a sound of laughter –– one that she has rarely let out ever since she was small and her father used to toss her in the air and catch her again –– and they look insane rough housing in a place for the dead but does not death make life more cognizant? Is not death a reminder to live?

The light wrestling and tickling turns into tight hugging and the laughter dies down but it must echo, on their faces and into the woods and wherever it is in the afterlife that their late parents reside.

"You know," Zelena begins, "ever since I've gotten my magic back, I've been rather good at using it responsibly. I think I've earned a reward."

Regina raises a skeptical eyebrow. "Which would be…?"

Zelena lets go of her, raises her hand in the air and Regina knits her brow in confusion until something in the air too narrow to be a bird just _appears_––

"Oh. Oh no. No-no-no."

The sweeper slows as it approaches them and Zelena wraps her hand around the handle.

"Did you absolutely _have_ to pick out my _Swiffer_?"

"You're lying to me if you've never wanted to try."

"I feel like that's not going to be comfortable."

"Neither was falling on my face while trying to mount a horse the other day."

"See now that was funny. This is different. And the shape of the head looks like it wouldn't be conducive to flying in the air at high speeds. You'll likely break it off if it flaps over." She stands and takes the sweeper from Zelena. "So how do you get on this thing?"

Zelena bears the widest smile, and eagerly begins to demonstrate. "Here. You put your legs over, like so. Make sure your heels are together. Think _Kiki's Delivery Service_."

"That was a cute film."

"Wasn't it? Now hold on to me."

"Okay." Regina folds her arms over Zelena's belly as she settles behind her. "By the way, touch the WetJet and I'm replacing your entire wardrobe with kermit onesies."

"Noted."

When they lift off from the ground and glide above the Storybrooke horizon, they pretend that they're not, in fact, screaming about how bad of an idea this truly was.

(And if ever they had hungered for the freedom to _just_ _be_––they know now that they will never starve again.)

_End_.


End file.
